1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a holding apparatus for a flexible beltlike member which holds the flexible beltlike member in the carriage, and a recording apparatus including the holding apparatus in the recording apparatus including: an ink-jet recording head provided in a carriage reciprocating in main scanning direction; an ink cartridge provided independently of the carriage; and a flexible beltlike member in which the ink channel interconnecting the ink-jet recording head and the ink cartridge is provided. In addition, the present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus.
Here, the liquid ejecting apparatus means a printer, a copying machine or a facsimile which performs recording by injecting ink from the recording head onto the recording medium using an ink-jet type recording head, as well as any apparatus which makes the liquid to be adhered onto an exposed media corresponding to the recording medium by injecting any type of liquid suitable for a predetermined purpose instead of the ink from a liquid injection head corresponding to the ink-jet type recording head.
Other than the above-mentioned recording head, the liquid injection head includes a coloring-material injection head used for color filter manufacturing such as a liquid crystal display, an electrode material (conductive paste) injection head used for electrode formation of an organic EL display, a field emission display (FED), etc., and an organic substance injection head used for biochip manufacture, a specimen injection head as a precision pipette, and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an exemplary recording apparatus or a liquid ejecting apparatus, an ink-jet printer is known in which an ink-jet recording head is provided on a carriage that reciprocates in a main scanning direction. The carriage is caused to reciprocate in the main scanning direction, while being guided by a guide means or a guide shaft extending along the main scanning direction.
Here, there are two types of the carriage, that is, a carriage with which an ink cartridge is mounted, and a carriage which does not carry an ink cartridge. As for the ink jet printer where the ink cartridge is mounted in the carriage, the carriage reciprocates along the main scanning direction while the ink cartridge is being mounted on the carriage, and the ink is supplied from the ink cartridge to the ink-jet recording head. As for the ink jet printer which does not carry an ink cartridge in the carriage, the ink cartridge is provided in a body (substrate) of the ink jet printer independently of the carriage, and the ink cartridge and the ink-jet recording head are interconnected by an ink supply tube. Therefore, the flexible (elastic) ink supply tube is employed so that the ink supply tube may be deformable in response to the movement of the carriage as disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-67279 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H10-226084.
Apart from that, it is also possible to employ a configuration in which a plurality of ink channels are provided in the flexible beltlike member instead of a configuration in which a plurality of ink supply tubes are bundled. However, since a flexible beltlike member has flexibility only in one direction (surface direction) in such a configuration, guidance of the flexible beltlike member extending from the carriage is likely to be difficult.
In particular, when the flexible beltlike member extends from the carriage in which the surface is brought to be a horizontal position, the position needs to be changed so that the surface is vertically oriented. Accordingly, the structure for holding the beltlike member becomes complicated which causes an increase in cost.
In addition, as well as the carriage, when the ink cartridge is configured to be movable in the apparatus, the ink supply tube must follow the movement of the carriage and also the movement of the ink cartridge. In this case, a large space is required for guiding the flexible beltlike member in the apparatus, which makes the apparatus bulky and the holding structure complex, which also causes the increase in cost.